


like stars burning holes right through the dark (flicking fire like saltwater into my eyes)

by majesdane



Category: Skins (UK)
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-21
Updated: 2010-02-21
Packaged: 2017-12-06 09:44:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/734266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/majesdane/pseuds/majesdane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>When she was twelve, she died.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	like stars burning holes right through the dark (flicking fire like saltwater into my eyes)

  
how nice -- to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.  
\-- _slaughterhouse five_ , kurt vonnegut

 

 

When she's twelve, she dies.

That's what it feels like, anyway. Or so she thinks. She's never actually been dead before. But there's no other way to look at it. She spends each night staring blankly up at the ceiling, until sleep manages to overcome whatever it is that's keeping her awake and she wakes up the next morning on top of her blankets and sheets, clothes from the past day still on, wrinkled. Her eyes feel sore, her eyelids heavy. That stops after a week, when she stops crying.

(And how marvellous that is indeed, to just stop crying. To stop feeling.)

Her mum cries a lot more. For a month she sits around the house and does little else. Which is okay, really, but she's needed for things. Sophia's never been aware, before, of how much her mum is needed until she stops doing things. Sophia tries doing the laundry, just because it's all piling up, and forgets to separate the colours from the whites and stains everything red. Which again, is okay, but from then on Matt does the laundry, because he isn't okay with his pants being a startling pink colour.

On the mantle is a picture of her dad; it's one of his army photos. He looks different in those, Sophia thinks. She remembers a lightness in his eyes and the curve of his smile, which isn't in the photo on the mantle. It isn't in any of the army photos. That's the thing, about the army. You grow up and you put things away, like storing away old clothes in boxes in the attic and thinking maybe one day you'll wear them again, even though secretly you know you won't, because you've out grown them and that's why you're putting them away in the first place. Except, you can't ever really get rid of them, so you just shove it all away.

Out of sight, out of mind.

(How lovely that must be.)

Matt says, Don't think about those kinds of things.

Sophia doesn't stop thinking about them, she just stops talking about them. You just can't stop thinking; she's tried that before, and it doesn't work. She keeps thinking about the boxed up feelings and her dad's picture on the mantle and about how she never noticed before, but the house feels almost suffocating sometimes. The air is just thick and heavy; you can't breathe it in properly. Maybe her mum notices and that's why she keeps crying.

Maybe her mum should take down the picture. She keeps looking at it and Sophia doesn't see how that helps, just looking at a picture of someone like that, especially when they look like a stranger. She has a nice picture of her dad from when she was eight, when they all went to the park one day and her dad bought her and Matt ice cream cones and then her dad let her ride on his shoulders. She'd dripped ice cream on his head and he'd laughed. Their mum -- who was happy then -- snapped a picture. Sophia had it taped to the wall near her bed. Her dad's eyes are closed in the photo. That's okay.

She has the creases in his shirt memorized. There is the way the light is hitting his hair and it makes it look blonder than it really is. Was. One time she tried to draw it, but it ended up looking horrible, and that wasn't okay, so she'd torn it up in a thousand different pieces before dumping it all in the trash bin downstairs.

 

;;

 

She's thirteen when she realizes she likes girls.

It hasn't ever been something she's thought of before; one night she has a rather vivid dream of a girl -- just some girl from her Maths class, Sophia can't even remember her name, they've never talked -- reaching across the aisle between their desks. She reaches across the desks and pulls Sophia in by the tie and presses their lips together. The girl tastes like cherries. Sophia awakes with a jolt, her heart racing; she isn't able to fall back asleep and later she dozes off during History class and ends up with ink all over her face from the notes scribbled on her hand.

Girls in magazines are always really pretty and she's never thought about it before, how she likes to cut them out and make little collages with them. She has two over her desk, all carefully arranged and pasted together and well, she's just always assumed that everyone did that sort of thing. At school, girls have pictures of fit boys in their lockers, but they also have pictures of girls too, sometimes (like Kylie Minogue or Cheryl Cole or Gwen Stefani) and that seems alright. No one ever says anything about that.

For two months she convinces herself that she doesn't like girls. And then she has another dream.

This one's very different -- she isn't in her Maths classroom, first of all. Also, it's a different girl this time; Sophia doesn't know her from anywhere, so maybe it's just a girl her mind made up. The girl leans in and kisses her, but it's rougher than the first time Sophia's dreamed about getting kissed. This is rough and hungry and the girl shifts her hand so that it rests on Sophia's thigh, just under her skirt.

And _then_ Sophia wakes up, the sheets twisted around her; she's drenched in a cold sweat, fringe plastered to her forehead, clothes clinging to her skin. There's a horribly uncomfortable throbbing between her thighs, and she presses herself against her mattress, face down into her pillow, until she manages to fall asleep again.

(Recalling the dream the next morning leaves her in the same state, and she finally gives in, slipping her hand under her pyjama bottoms and knickers and clumsily working her fingers until her wrist is sore and fireworks are going off behind her eyelids, the muscles in her legs tense and straining.)

(It's a problem.)

 

;;

 

No one can know.

(At least, not yet, anyway. Not yet.)

 

;;

 

She hates being an Army Cadet.

Her mum likes it, though, because it reminds her of their dad. It reminds Sophia of their dad too, which is just another reason why she hates it so fucking much. Two years ago, it had been bearable -- _okay_ , even. Maybe even nice, at times. She had liked it a little bit. But now she fucking hates it and she wants nothing more than to just fucking _quit_. That won't do any good, though. Her mum will just shout and cry and Sophia will end up feeling sick, with an awful headache. That's what always happens.

And anyway, her mum always gets her way in the end. This is a lesson she'd learned a long time ago.

Like the time when she was twelve and her mum was in one of her moods, a few months after she'd stopped crying every day and spending all day sitting on the couch -- her mum had kicked her box of crayons (the sixty-four count box, and she'd worked so hard to keep them in the correct order and the tips sharp) across the room. All the crayons had gone flying. A few of them had broken.

(The whole fucking box had been ruined then, because her favourite shades of blue and green had snapped in half and so what if she never even _used_ that light purple one, it was the _principle_ of the matter. She'd thrown the whole thing out and hadn't spoken to her mum for a week after that. As if it'd made a difference. Changed things. Matt had bought her a new box later, but it wasn't the same, and she still hated her mother for ruining things.)

At school, she had a few pictures of girls on the inside of her locker, tucked in the back, where she could see them when she fetched her books. She didn't dare put anything in her army cadet locker. It was one thing, if people at school knew. It was another thing entirely if people _here_ knew. It would mean --

She still hasn't told anyone. About being gay. Not even Matt, even though one night he's sitting on her bed and, looking at the ever-growing collection of pictures of pretty girls pasted to the wall above her desk, asks her if there is anything she'd like to tell him. If there's something she'd like to talk about. Sophia's heart skips a beat then, and she wants to tell him _so badly_. He's her brother, after all, and they've always been close. Surely he won't think any less of her. But the words get stuck in her throat and she just shakes her head and says nothing.

He doesn't say anything after that, but he stops coming into her room.

Things change. They stop talking.

Sophia knows it was her fault. But if only he'd just tried a bit harder, if only he'd _kept_ asking, maybe then she would have told him. It would have been too much and she'd have confessed. But he never pressed, never questioned her, and that was the problem. She can't do it on her own.

(But that's what happened. People grow up and they stop talking. Our bodies get bigger, but our hearts get torn up. That's what movies taught her.)

 

;;

 

Roundview isn't any different.

School is school and everyone seems to be so fucking excited to be in college, but really, Sophia doesn't see what's so special about it. It's just another place to be ignored, another place to blend into the background and keep quiet. She doesn't really mind it, the being ignored aspect. It's nice to always have every part of her to herself and to not have to worry about impressing someone else or wondering if people thought you were a loser. If they never noticed you, they'd never think anything bad about you. It was almost like you didn't even exist.

Nothing exciting ever happens at school anyway.

(Except for the student elections and the time that blond girl from English who's quite loud and outspoken stands up on a table during lunch. Sophia isn't really been paying attention; she misses most of what's going on. But then Cook wins and the whole school just starts rioting, which is partially ridiculous, but also kind of nice, because she gets to go home early.)

Classes are easy. She doesn't care.

None of it matters.

 

;;

 

Her mum says no.

She should have expected it; her mum always thought art was rubbish. She doesn't think it's a practical life skill, which is so fucking retarded, and anyway, Sophia is filled to the fucking _brim_ with _practical_ knowledge and it is nice to have something that doesn't have to be black and white like everything else in her life. It's nice to have something in her life that makes her _feel_ , instead of just think. She's tired of thinking.

(She tries to stop thinking, but it never works.)

And really, she shouldn't let it bother her so much, because it's just fucking art school, and really _fuck_ her mum, because she thinks after seventeen years of always doing what was expected of her she should be able to get to do whatever she wants. Her mum just doesn't get it -- her mum really has _no fucking clue_. That's the problem. That's the whole goddamn problem right there, the fact that her mum is fucking _clueless_. She doesn't fucking get it. She doesn't get that this is the one thing Sophia's ever really loved.

Maybe it's stupid, to want something that badly.

(She doesn't care.)

 

;;

 

Fuck it.

She tells her mum that she's spending the day with friends. It's a flat out lie, but it's not as if her mum is going to check in on her. Really, Sophia thinks, she's probably just glad to get her out of the house. And anyway, she's lied to her mum so many before it just feels routine by now. That's how these things always turn out, in the end. You fall into a pattern and you get stuck there and then you can't ever get out again.

It's a warm Friday. She can feel her tank top clinging to her back with a light sweat and she she sighs, shifting in her seat, pushing her fringe back and away from her forehead. It's a long train ride; she spends the better part of it staring out at the countryside flashing by and wishing that she could be out there, instead of here, stuck on a train and heading to a place that she's never actually going to go to. There is far too much weighing her down; she can't break free. She is going to be stuck in Bristol with her mum forever. She is going to join the army and end up with all her emotions in little boxes, until she herself ends up in a box, six feet underground, where people will only come visit her once a year, on her birthday, because that's the only time they can be bothered.

(She's crying again. She can feel the sting of tears in her eyes and this is just _ridiculous_ , she doesn't even know what she's upset about, except, she really kind of does, and it's so _stupid_ , and you can't just _expect_ things to happen, you can't -- )

Goldsmiths is pretty. The people there are not.

Typical, she thinks, kicking at a rock and watching it skitter across the pavement before landing on the grass. Everyone and every place is always like this. Nothing ever changes. Why does she even care about being stuck in Bristol or being dead or anything, when --

And then she sees her. The loud, blond girl from her English class.

Naomi.

 

;;

 

(This is really fucking fun, she thinks, as Naomi downs another drink with her, and they're both _laughing_ , and it feels real, for once, like really fucking real and true and Naomi really has the prettiest eyes and smile of anyone that Sophia's ever met.)

(They tell secrets. Suddenly lying seems less and more of a bad thing all at once. Naomi looks sad. Sophia's fingers itch to brush the hair out of Naomi's eyes. Their hands are so close together. She really fucking wants to move her hand, so fucking badly, but there's no point, is there, because Sophia was _there_ at the Love Ball, and she knows that Naomi's not -- she just fucking wants to hold her hand, really, that's all.)

(And then Naomi moves for her.)

(It feels like flying.)

 

;;

 

I've never done this before, Sophia says.

It's okay, Naomi says. I have.

She reminds Sophia of a wild animal, caged in and desperate to escape.

 

;;

 

(Naomi's hand slips under the elastic band of her knickers and Sophia gasps at the touch, grabbing Naomi's wrist and nails digging into the skin. Naomi watches her intently, as her fingers work in slow, slight circles, and eventually Sophia has to close her eyes, head thrown back against the pillows, because it's just too much.)

(Naomi presses kisses along her neck. Sophia bites down on her bottom lip hard enough to make it bleed.)

 

;;

 

You should go, Naomi says later, when they're lying in the semi-darkness of the room. They're lying on top of the covers in just their knickers and bras and Sophia's staring up the ceiling, still trying to catch her breath. She's not sure if her legs will work, when she pushes herself up into a sitting position and swings them over the side of the bed. She can feel the carpet warm and worn beneath her feet as she dresses silently, watching Naomi the whole time.

Naomi, lying there with her braids undone, blond hair a bit longer than Sophia'd remembered it from English class. It spills about her face, framing it. Her eyes are bright blue, even in the darkness. Sophia can see the curve of her hip, the slope of her neck, the shape of her collarbone. She wants to trace her tongue and fingers over every dip and arch of Naomi's body.

But Naomi is so far away, lying on the bed. And she does not turn to look at Sophia.

 

;;

 

She sees Naomi everywhere she goes now.

Maybe it's coincidence or fate or maybe she'd always seen Naomi before and had just never taken notice of her before. Which is ridiculous, really, because Sophia's fairly certain she would have remembered something like that. And it's all really nice and lovely, except, well, Naomi doesn't seem to notice Sophia quite as much as Sophia notices her. And Naomi's also usually not alone, either; Sophia thinks she shouldn't be surprised to see Emily, because really, _everyone_ knows, about them, but for some reason --

(she won't let herself think about that.)

She remembers the time in English class, when Cook called Naomi _blondie_. What a strange thing to remember, she thinks, even as she puts the songs on her iPod, scribbling the lyrics along the margins of her sketchbook. She is trying to replicate the way she saw Naomi that night -- it's not going well. She can't find the right blue of Naomi's eyes and the lines all seem too sharp and stiff to her. She can't convey with a picture the softness that is Naomi's lips, or the way her hair felt under Sophia's hands, between her fingers.

A prospectus from Goldsmiths comes in, in late July. She flips through the pages half-heartedly until she stumbles across a picture of Naomi. Naomi, with her. Naomi, laughing, hair in braids, eyes half-closed. Naomi, Naomi, Naomi. Surely it must be fate or _something_ , because you can't just _expect_ things to happen, but things like this don't just happen _because_ , and surely this must mean something.

Something big and grand and significant. It _has_ to.

(yes.)

 

;;

 

Naomi is everywhere, even when she is not.

(the world is less beautiful when naomi is not around)

 

;;

 

she tries to find the perfume naomi wore. she sprays it on her pillow, buries her face in it. remembers pressing kisses along naomi's neck, tugging off her top and covering naomi's breasts over her bra with her hands.

naomi had leaned into the touch, sighing. sophia'd trailed soft kisses along naomi's stomach, feeling the muscles tense under her touch. naomi'd made her come, sophia's lip bleeding, her nails digging into naomi's wrist so hard that she left marks. she'd kissed them later, turning naomi's hand over in her own, kissing the palm.

i think you should go, naomi had said, but she hadn't moved from the bed.

(she hadn't meant it)

 

;;

 

naomi kisses emily on the street, in front of the shop

it doesn't hurt, it just feels like drowning

(she's heard it's just like falling asleep)

(how lovely)


End file.
